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Auction: 17005 - British and Foreign Coins and Commemorative Medals
Lot: 236

John Freind (1675-1728), Royal Physician, bronze Medal, by F. de Saint-Urbain, bare bust left, rev. ancient and contemporary Physicians greet, 58mm. (E.515; MI ii 488, 28; Storer 1122), about extremely fine

provenance
Baldwin's Argentum sale, 26 May 2012, lot 292

John Freind led a prominent life with his studies on the case of hydrocephalus in a child, unusual convulsions in Oxfordshire and a reinterpretation of menstrual cycle leading to his appointment as Fellow of the Royal Society on 20 March 1712. He would accompany the Earl of Peterborough during the War of Spanish Succession where he suggested 'malt and oat beer' were most suitable for combatting a local fever epidemic. He would also later challenge the effectiveness of innoculation as a cure for the smallpox outbreak ravaging Britain in the 1710s and 1720s. Despite his being implicated in the Atterbury plot to restore the House of Stuart, in his later years he would earn the appointment of Royal Physician, first to Frederick, Prince of Wales and later Queen Caroline herself. He died on 28 July 1728 at the age of 52. He is memorialised in the south aisle of Westminster Abbey as well at his burial plot in the parish churchyard of Higham, Buckinghamshire.

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Sold for
£90